Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivian
Good point. Yes, I am doing that. I suppose that's not fair. But my friend has the WiFi Kobo and while it is faster than mine, it's still slower than Kindle. My husband and I tried the Kobo Touch in the store; I thought it was a little faster than the others and he thought it was the same. One thing about the Kobo Touch I don't like is that it's smaller than the other Kobos, with the same size screen. That is, instead of taking advantage of the lack of controls to put in a bigger screen, they used the same size of screen and made the whole device smaller. Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
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The eInk screens are mass produced by a couple of manufactures. They likely only come in a couple of sizes. To order a size that is outside the norm would likely cost the maker more per unit (say something odd like 7-8"). There is a balancing act that goes into these products in order to meet a certain price point, and margins. The Kobo Touch is one of the cheapest current generation eReaders.
For a comparison this is why your will see relatively larger increases in the cost of say a 22" LCD screen for a computer monitor verse say a 24". The 22" are just manufactured on a much larger scale (plus there is less loss with the defective 22" panels verse a defective 24" so manufactures/suppliers don't have to cover. At the moment 6" is the sweet spot for eInk screens as 22" is for LCD monitors, but this will change in time. There is a reason the Kindle DX is so much more expensive than the 6" model.
Also as others commented, I haven't pulled a Kindle 3 screen, and Kobo Touch screen apart, but I really doubt the Kindle 3 has a sharper screen. Much in the same way that TV sellers/manufacturers tend to pump up the contrast/saturation of TV sets in stores to make 'x' model look better (rather than true colour reproduction) so too do I believe the Kindle 3 has a heavier font that give the impression of being sharper/darker. The nice think about the Kobo Touch is that you can just change it to whatever font you like.